The idea for this book grew out of a conversation I had with a man who had grown up as an evacuee.
He challenged me to look at the impact of evacuation on a generation of children and to explode
some of the myths that have developed around the subject and which are perpetuated in literature
and the media. As usual I found myself unable to resist the challenge. My first surprise came
when I revisited my own family's story and realised that my father had, in the strict sense of
the meaning, been 'evacuated'. He was sent with his school from the Wirral to the Lake District
and spent a very happy couple of years living near Ullswater. He certainly did not fit my picture
of a typical evacuee and my research led me to realise that of the 3,500,000 children evacuated in
Britain, less than half had been sent away at the beginning of the war with a luggage label pinned
to their coats.

As I got deeper into the research for When the Children Came Home it became clear that the picture
painted of evacuation that we have become familiar with is far from the whole story. There were four
phases of evacuation in Britain and many minor movements of children as families decided to send
sons and daughters away or bring them home based on decisions that did not always reflect the passage
of history.

A village foster mother saying goodbye to a girl she adopted for the war

Therefore rather than being one large, homogenous, organised evacuation, the picture is more interesting.
As are the reactions to it. Some children – a sizeable majority – had a wonderful
time and speak today with warmth and enthusiasm about the generous villagers and country families who
took them into their homes and treated them kindly while they were away from their own parents. To
underline this, hundreds, if not thousands, of children were much later on beneficiaries of foster
parents' wills.

Even if initially some children were homesick or unsettled, those who settled in well had a superb
experience. Others did not and these are the stories that make the headlines and are of
more interest, perhaps, to the press and general public. What this book seeks to do is to put these
unhappy experiences into the context of the overall evacuation story and attempts to redress the balance.

It is perhaps surprising that some children, especially those who had been very happy with their
foster families, found it more difficult coming home than they had done leaving in the first
place. This is understandable, not least as they were of course older when they returned to their
natural parents. Some children never returned whilst others came back briefly, only to leave again
and move to live closer to or even with their foster parents again. Almost everyone admitted to some
period of readjustment but the majority of children, now adults, were keen to point out that they soon
found a way to cope with home life once again.

The message of the book is an upbeat one that celebrates the positive aspects of the evacuation story.
However it does not shy away from looking at the more difficult aspects of separation and the impact
that had on the long-term well-being of the evacuee children.

“The great glory of When the Children Came Home is that it acknowledges all these
tremendous difficulties, but at the same time shows how, more
often than not, people of all ages managed to overcome them.”

“Time and again, I found myself so moved by passages in the book
that when I tried to read them out to my wife, I had to
keep pausing and take deep breaths. As ever, the
tales of pure kindness are the most powerful of all.”

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday, March 2011 (Chosen as Book of the Week - awarded 5 Stars)

“A brilliant new book”

The Daily Express March 2011

“Julie Summers has put together a fascinating range of stories about the experiences of evacuees during and after the war, and added one or two tales of her own.”

“Summers offers a well-rounded portrait of the evacuee experience... The use of interviews,
written accounts and memoirs makes for compelling reading. It is another excellent example of
oral history. ”